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From Primedia Publications
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What a Dump!
Margaret Mitchell bestowed that affectionate nickname on the Atlanta apartment where she wrote Gone With the Wind. It's now the centerpiece of an attraction that commemorates the author and her epic tale.

By Kathy Witt

Margaret Mitchell affectionately referred to her Crescent Avenue apartment as "The Dump."
When I toured Margaret Mitchell's Atlanta apartment last spring, I was astonished that such mundane surroundings could have provided the setting for a headstrong Atlanta debutante to write a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the South, the Civil War and folks with "gumption." Surely Mitchell's alcove office, tucked between wall and window seat, was much too small for the creation of the epic Gone With the Wind —a book that only the Bible outsells.

Born in 1900, Margaret was a fifth-generation Atlantan, daughter of a prominent attorney and a suffragist, in a family that relished retelling stories of their ancestors' illustrious wartime experiences. Margaret was a tomboy who liked to stage plays, but she apparently shed her rough-and-tumble image after falling in love with Lieutenant Clifford Henry, a Harvard man who would lose his life in France during World War I. Margaret enrolled at Smith College in 1918 and made her Atlanta debut two years later. For the occasion she chose to perform an Apache dance that caused such a scandal it prevented her entry into the Junior League. Her own "gumption" was getting her in trouble.



She remained unlucky in love, too, although suitors flocked to the dark-eyed, dark-haired debutante. The two leading contenders were Red Upshaw and John Marsh. Mitchell married Upshaw, who turned out to be an abusive alcoholic and a bootlegger. She divorced him and then landed a job with the Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine, where she wrote under the name Peggy Mitchell.

For the occasion she chose to perform an Apache dance that caused such a scandal it prevented her entry into the Junior League.
Things were looking up. In 1925 she married Marsh, an editor and writer, and they held their wedding reception here in the apartment on Crescent Avenue, a place Margaret affectionately called "The Dump." Margaret left the Atlanta Journal the following year because of debilitating arthritis in her feet and ankles. Often confined to bed, she would send Marsh out to get reading material for her. He returned from one book foray with a Remington typewriter. She'd read so many books, he thought it was time for her to write one.

According to Marianne Walker, a professor of English at the University of Kentucky/Henderson College who studied the couple's letters while researching her 1985 book, Margaret Mitchell & John Marsh, The Love Story Behind Gone With the Wind, Marsh encouraged his wife to write about her interest in the Civil War. She wrote here, in the front room of this 650-square-foot apartment, with her husband providing help and support. "John would have been the only person [Margaret] trusted with her work," says Walker. "That was just a given." He personally typed the only clean sections of what two Macmillan editors called "the worst looking manuscript" they had ever seen, and he also edited Gone With the Wind in preparation for publishing.

Before people enter Mitchell's Atlanta apartment, they usually start their tour at the visitors center next to the house. There they can see a short film called It May Not Be Tara, which sets the stage for the apartment tour and the Gone With the Wind Museum across the street.

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Kathy Witt is a freelance writer in northern Kentucky.
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